'17.18.47N 45.07.68W It’s official – we are Trade Wind sailing! Consistent
winds and some very big waves and swell. As you can see from the photo
Christopher is enjoying our new found speed with a beer and a pizza. Serving
meals has become interesting – a little like being in Fawlty Towers as
rather a lot is ending up on the floor – poor Manuel we keep blaming him!
Last week we had to take the jib down as the UV edge strip was shredding and
catching on the forestay. We took off most of the offending strip and tried
to tape the exposed sail edge. Sail tape didn’t hold but duct tape did!
Unfortunately, this too has now come off. I am pleased to report though
that the bit of UV strip we managed to salvage by sticking down with ‘No
More Nails’ is still holding! While we are on the subject of wear and tear,
this morning proved to be fun and games starting with our spinnaker pole
snapping in half. Just as we had rescued it – not funny in these seas –
Brian looked up and saw that the main halyard was very worn at the top of
the mast. We very carefully lowered the main sail only to notice that the
rope had also worn badly at each reef point. Fortunately, we still had the
halyard that this one had replaced. I managed to sew loops to the ends of
the two ropes and attach them together. We held our breaths as we carefully
pulled on the old halyard to feed the new one up, through and down inside
the mast, we breathed again when the new rope appeared at the bottom of the
mast. Sailing again but will probably have to do a bit of tacking as now no
pole for the jib. Less than 1000nm to go, St Lucia here we come!
